Here the young man, in fear of being discovered by those who occupied that warlike yet fair-looking dwelling, almost crawled on the ground. Nevertheless he quitted his track to get nearer to the house; and then, cowering among some reeds and bulrushes, he put his open hand above his eyebrows, and gazed sharply at the moat, the drawbridge, the low gateway with its round-headed arch, the battlements, and the black Norman flag that floated over them. The while he gazed, the blast of a trumpet sounded on the walls, and sounded again, and once again; and, after the third blast, a noise as of many horses treading the high road or causeway was heard among the fen reeds. The novice muttered, and almost swore blasphemously, (albeit by the rules of the order he was bound to use no stronger terms than _crede mihi_, or _planè_, or _certè_, or _benedicamus Domina_;)[5] but he continued to gaze under his palm until the sounds on the road came nearer and trumpet replied to trumpet. Then, muttering “This is not a tarrying place for the feet of a true Saxon!” he crawled back to the scarcely perceptible track he had left, and kept on, in a stooping posture but at a rapid pace, until he came to a thick clump of alders, the commencement of a wood which stretched, with scarcely any interruption, to the banks of the river Welland. Here, screened from sight, he struck the warlike end of his staff against the trunk of a tree, and said aloud, “Forty Norman men-at-arms! by Saint Etheldreda[6] and by the good eye-sight that Saint Lucia[7] hath vouchsafed unto me! Forty Norman cut-throats, and we in our succursal cell only five friars, two novices, two lay-brothers, and five hinds! and our poor upper buildings all made of wood, old and ready to burn like tow! and not ten bows in the place or five men knowing how to use them! By Saint Ovin[8] and his cross! were our walls but as strong as those of the monks of Ely, and our war-gear better, and none of us cowards, I would say, ‘Up drawbridge! defy this Norman woodcutter, who felled trees in the forest for his bread until brought by the bastard to cut Saxon throats and fatten upon the lands of our thanes and our churches and monasteries! I would spit at the beard of this Ivo Taille-Bois, and call upon Thurstan my Lord Abbat of Ely, and upon the true Saxon hearts in the Camp of Refuge, for succour!’” And the passionate young man struck the trunk of the poor unoffending tree until the bark cracked, and the long thin leaves, loosened by autumn, fell all about him.